ja_mageia

Recently Nick Donofrio, IBM’s Executive Vice President Innovation & Technology, was quoted stating, “If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing.” This seems to imply that innovation is dead. I disagree. I think that innovation is now assumed. The rate of change has accelerated so fast that you have to work on the edge of continual change in order to succeed. This makes execution the new innovation. Those companies that can aggressively and effectively get things done will succeed in the next cycle of business and technology. They may well get out in front of the technology wave we are riding and actually innovate by accident. This is exactly what happened with the development of the iPod by Apple. Apple now has a larger market capitalization than IBM.

I managed a number of different departments within IBM Global Services and found that a cult of execution (aggressive small company action) within the structure of IBM was a powerful combination. My department managed to build a high-end business intelligence infrastructure that would have cost anyone else more than $10M in hardware and labor. We did it for less than $1.5M because we worked like a small company while being insulated by the body fat of an IBM Global Services. Large companies looking to stay that way should work to combine small company culture with large company resources. Businesses that recognize the distinct advantage of execution will be the next innovation powerhouses.